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A DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY This page intentionally left blank. A Dictionary of Philosophy Third edition A.R.Lacey Department of Philosophy, King’s College, University of London First published in 1976 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd Second edition 1986 Third edition 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © A.R.Lacey 1976, 1986, 1996 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Lacey, A.R. A dictionary of philosophy.—3rd edn. 1. Philosophy—Dictionaries I. Title 190′.3′21 B41 ISBN 0-203-19819-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-19822-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-13332-7 (Print Edition) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available on request Preface to the first edition This book aims to give the layman or intending student a pocket encyclopaedia of philosophy, one with a bias towards explaining terminology. The latter task is not an easy one since philosophy is regularly concerned with concepts which are unclear. It is one main part of philosophy to clarify them rather than use them. What I have tried to do is to take some of the commonest terms and notions in current English-speaking philosophy and to give the reader some idea of what they mean to the philosopher and what sort of problems he finds associated with them. A work of this size cannot do justice to individual philosophers. The entries devoted to them offer only the barest outlines of their work, followed by the most philosophically important of their publications or, occasionally, those of other interest. Where possible, the original title and publication date is given, sometimes followed by the standard title of an English translation, or by a brief indication of the work’s topic. Where applicable, each of these entries ends with cross-references to all other entries where the philosopher is mentioned unless cross-references are already given in the text of the entry. It is important to remember that both the description of a philosopher’s activity and the list of his writings are by no means exhaustive. The choice of eighty or so philosophers represents, with some inevitable arbitrariness, a compromise between importance and popularity. In the book as a whole, epistemology and logic occupy far more space than, say, ethics, politics or aesthetics. This is because the former subjects are the central ones. Terms and concepts from them are constantly used in discussing the latter subjects, while the opposite process occurs rarely, of at all. Mathematical logic needs a dictionary to itself, and only those terms are included which occur widely in philosophical and traditional logic. Much the same applies to linguistic theory. I have also generally avoided terms associated with only one author, for which a standard edition or commentary is best consulted. Many philosophical terms, such as CONFIRMATION, also have a meaning in ordinary language and a technical meaning associated with a particular outlook. I have only occasionally mentioned the ordinary language one and I have not mentioned certain fairly obvious ambiguities of a kind common to many words. ‘Entailment’ may mean the relation of entailment, a proposition entailed, and a proposition saying that something entails something else. More important, many words are too complex for even the philosophically significant ambiguities to be covered completely. I have tried to give the dominant sense or senses in current, or currently studied, philosophy, and especially those senses which are technical, or reflect or give rise to philosophical problems. The short definitions that begin many of the longer entries should be taken only as attempts at giving the general character of the term in question. The wide-ranging reader must be prepared to find almost any term used in ways I have not mentioned. In particular, it can only mislead to offer brief and precise definitions of philosophical ‘-isms’. I have thus tried instead to bring out something of the general spirit of such terms, which often refer to features or aspects rather than to people or systems. Precision is similarly inapposite in recommending the use of a term like ‘the causal theory of meaning’ rather than ‘causal theories of meaning’. Context or even whim will often decide whether one talks of different theories, or of variants of a single theory. Words like ‘principle’, ‘law’, ‘rule’, ‘thesis’, ‘axiom’, again, are usually used almost indifferently in phrases like ‘the principle of…’. The cross-references are denoted by small capitals (italic type simply picks terms out), and are of two kinds, within entries and self-standing. The former are given only when they seem useful. The term referred to is often mentioned in an approximate or abbreviated, but obvious, form. For example, the entry called ‘conversion’ might be referred to as ‘converse’. The self-standing cross-references are not a guarantee that a term is treated fully, but they may be thought of as forming a sort of index. Terms with more than one word normally appear only once. RUSSELL’S PARADOX appears under R but not under P, and the discussion of innate ideas can be traced through IDEA. Cross- references which occur, preceded by ‘See also’, at the ends of articles may refer to the article as a whole, not just the last paragraph. No single principle underlies the bibliographies. An item may be the original source of a notion, or a good, elementary, or accessible discussion, or a recent discussion from which previous ones can be traced, or a bibliographical source. I have mentioned certain reprintings of articles, but have not tried to be exhaustive, because space forbids and they are constantly being added to. I do not claim to have read everything mentioned, though I hope I have not mentioned things without adequate reason. The absence of a work is not of course a point against it. It may mean no more than that I have not come across it. Readers lucky enough to have access to P.Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, 8 vols, 1967, will no doubt use it anyway, so I have hardly ever referred to it, though I am immensely indebted to it myself. J.O.Urmson (ed.), The Concise Encyclopaedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, 1960, and D.Runes (ed.), Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942 (mainly its logical entries) have considerably helped me, and may also help the reader. The intermittent ‘recent work in…’ surveys in the American Philosophical Quarterly may also be mentioned. Finally it is a pleasure to acknowledge the great help I have received from my friends and colleagues, Mr D.A.Lloyd Thomas, Dr D.M.Tulloch and Dr. J.L.Watling have between them offered detailed comments on the entire manuscript, and each has made very significant contributions to both the merits of the work and the morale of its author. For similar comments on smaller portions I am greatly indebted to Dr W.A.Hodges, Miss R.L.Meager, Mr. J.D.Valentine and Professor P.G.Winch. Many other colleagues have helped me by answering queries and discussing individual points. I am also of course indebted to many philosophical publications, especially those mentioned in the bibliographies. The following among my non-philosophical colleagues have gone to great trouble in assisting me to communicate comprehensibly: Mrs J.H. Bloch, Prof. D.F.Cheesman, Dr G.Darlow, Dr D.R.Dicks, Dr M. R.Hoare, Dr E.Jacobs, Mr T.B.Taylor, Miss E.C.Vollans, Dr G. H.Wright. None of these, naturally, is responsible for what I have said, especially as I have occasionally gone my own way, and have made many alterations since they saw it. Mrs Helen Marshall has helped me to make a considerable number of improvements in my style and Dr Ted Honderich has been of great assistance to me in various ways in the later stages. I am also grateful to the Philosophy Department of Bedford College for allowing me two sabbatical terms to work on this book. And I am grateful to numerous typists and secretaries who have come to my aid in time of need. Preface to second edition This edition contains twenty-five new entries: Abstraction, Agglomeration, Ancestral, Cambridge change, Charity (principle of), Determinates and determinables, Dualism, Functionalism, Genidentity, Goldbach’s conjecture, Heap (paradox of), Hermeneutic, Holism, Materialism, Memory, Newcomb’s paradox, Polish notation, Prisoner’s dilemma, Quale, Qualities (primary and secondary), Relativism, Santayana, Satisfice, Whewell, Zombie. Twenty-four cross-references have been added and two deleted. I have made various corrections, amendments and additions throughout, and have added to many of the bibliographies. My main debt of gratitude is to Dr J.L.Watling for discussing in detail with me substantial parts of the new material. I am also grateful to many of my philosophical colleagues, especially Dr D. M.Edgington, Dr S.Guttenplan, Prof. D.W.Hamlyn, Dr W.A. Hodges, Dr C.Hughes, Dr R.M.Sainsbury, Mr A.B.Savile, Dr. R.Spencer-Smith, and to Mrs M.Blackburn of the University of London Library, for help on smaller portions or points of detail, and I have tried to benefit from the many points made by reviewers and private correspondents.